Jan van Orley

[2] Jan van Orley was born in Brussels in 1665 and trained with his father Pieter (called Siret), who was a landscape artist and miniaturist.

[4] Unlike his brother Richard or his contemporary Victor Honoré Janssens, Jan van Orley never studied or lived in Italy.

After the destruction, Brussels' authorities and institutions commenced rebuilding immediately and places of worship, public buildings and guild halls arose from the ashes.

[8][9] Jan van Orley was a prolific artist and left an extensive oeuvre in a wide variety of techniques including painting, drawing, printmaking and tapestry design.

The two artists often collaborated on tapestry cartoons with Coppens designing the landscapes and Jan van Orley adding the staffage.

In their works of the early 1700s, van Orley and Coppens developed mythological, romance and genre scenes which gave of a lighter spirit and tone to tapestry designs.

[12] They contributed to the early 18th century shift of the Brussels workshops towards more playful forms, away from the severe Baroque historical and mythological subjects.

The marquis of Prié who was the acting governor of the Austrian Netherlands had brought watercolor copies of seven of the Raphael tapestries from Rome to Brussels.

[13] Other series on which Jan van Orley worked for the Reydams Leyniers workshop are the 'Story of Don Quixote', "Teniers' and the "Story of Telemachus II'.